NICK KHAN DETAILS POTENTIAL ‘TKO ALL-STAR WEEKEND’ FOLLOWING UFC & WWE MERGER

The Endeavor takeover of WWE and merger with UFC to form the TKO Group was officially confirmed back on September 12.

The effects the takeover will have on the company may not be known right now, but we may be set for some ‘All-Star weekend’s coming up in the future.

WWE president Nick Khan spoke to the Bill Simmons Podcast, where he discussed a potential ‘TKO All-Star Weekend’, which would feature SmackDown on a Friday, a big UFC pay-per-view on a Saturday, and a WWE premium live event on a Sunday.

He said:

“The conversations are just beginning now. Everybody wanted to make sure that we got all the regulatory approvals in place. Department of Justice approval, SEC approval, a couple of international approvals that we needed and obviously, we got all of those. The conversations are happening now. Yes, what everyone envisions is, can you set up an all-star TKO weekend where SmackDown goes on Friday, UFC on Saturday with pay-per-view, and WWE goes with a premium live event on Sunday. Can you do that from the same city? Certainly, a lot of cost efficiencies there in terms of production, but a lot of revenue efficiencies in terms of upside there as well.

“Certainly, the fighters and WWE superstars stay separate. Could you have a Ronda Rousey or Brock Lesnar come along who can cross from one to the other? Sure, but that’s a once-in-a-decade type of thing. In terms of production, [UFC Exec VP/Operations & Production] Craig Borsari and [WWE Line Producer] Kevin Dunn, they’ve had a number of conversations on those efficiencies, how it might look, and how it might work. Hopefully, we have some news on that in a couple of months.”

Khan continued on, saying that WWE and UFC events would likely avoid each other to avoid a conflict of interest, with UFC not likely to run an event over WrestleMania weekend, and the same for WWE on big UFC event weekends.

He added:

“Ideally, what we like, especially if you look at the international expansion of WWE’s premium live events and UFC’s already expansion, you could see a lot of events of ‘WWE is going at 3pm eastern from an international location, UFC is going at 8 eastern domestically,’ or the opposite of that. We like that too because you have two gates, two merchandise, in theory, if you get a government subsidy for the international or domestic show, you have that and boom, both events are right there. By planning in advance, I don’t believe we’ll trip over each other in any way.”